388
Opinion of the Court
Atlantic next contends that a plain meaning can be discerned from prior use of the term in life insurance tax legislation. According to Atlantic, the term has its roots in the Life Insurance Company Income Tax Act of 1959, which provided tax consequences for changes in the "basis" for determining life insurance reserves. 73 Stat. 125, 26 U. S. C. § 810(d) (1958 ed., Supp. I). But that provision does not define, or for that matter even use, the term "reserve strengthening." Though the regulation that implemented the provision uses the term "reserve strengthening" in a caption, Treas. Reg. § 1.810-3(a), 26 CFR § 1.810-3(a) (1997), its text does not mention the term, and one of its Examples speaks only of "reserve strengthening attributable to the change in basis which occurred in 1959," § 1.810-3(b), Ex. 2. If, as Atlantic argues, "basis" and "assumptions or methodologies" are interchangeable terms, Brief for Petitioner 17, n. 8, and a change in basis is necessary for "reserve strengthening," it is redundant to say "reserve strengthening attributable to the change in basis which occurred in 1959," much as it would be to say "a sunburn attributable to the sun in 1959." On Atlantic's assumptions, the more natural formulation would have been simply "reserve strengthening in 1959." Thus, the 1959 Act and implementing regulation suggest, if anything, that a change in basis is a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition for "reserve strengthening."
Atlantic further contends that the term "reserve strengthening" draws a plain meaning from a provision of the Tax Reform Act of 1984 that accorded a "fresh start" adjustment to life insurance reserves. Div. A, 98 Stat. 758, note following 26 U. S. C. § 801 (1984 Act). That provision, like the "fresh start" adjustment for PC insurers in the 1986 Act, said that the "fresh start" would not apply to reserve strengthening, specifically, "to any reserve strengthening reported for Federal income tax purposes after September 27, 1983, for a taxable year ending before January 1, 1984." 98
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